From one of the developers behind the original Rainbow Six® and Ghost Recon® games, comes a thinking-man's first-person shooter featuring in-depth character and weapon customization. Take your time. Think ahead. Get the job done.
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
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About
In GROUND BRANCH, you will play as the elite paramilitary arm of the CIA's Special Activities Center/Special Operations Group (SAC/SOG) and lead other special operations forces through challenging deniable ops all over the globe. With deliberate, calculated and unforgiving gameplay, GROUND BRANCH aims to be the true rebirth of the tactical realism genre of the late '90s and early 2000s. Powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 4, GB puts the "tactical" back in "tactical shooter" — no compromises.
GROUND BRANCH's unique True First-Person System improves world immersion and awareness of your surroundings, providing zero disconnect between your view and your character's physical presence in the environment. See your foot sticking out of cover? Better tuck it in — enemies may be able to see it (and shoot it) too, but only if their line of sight and muzzle are verifiably unobstructed. Cameras are placed at the character's eyes and bullets originate from the weapon's muzzle. Managing your height over bore when shooting around obstacles or aiming for precision in CQB is critical. In GROUND BRANCH, what you see is what you get.
A minimal HUD with multiple optional elements ensures that vital information is available, but never a constant obstacle to either immersion or your field of view.
Say goodbye to pre-defined kits and fully customize your character. From gear, basic appearance, and outfit, to in-depth vest and weapon platform customization, down to individual pouch and attachment placement. What you bring to your mission is determined by your loadout choice, which carries realistic consequences: with the encumbrance and stamina system, too much equipment will impact your character’s speed and performance; place a scope too forward on the rail and your sight picture will be too small; bring a long rifle into CQB and weapon collision may prove a hindrance.
Forget unlocks, microtransactions and loot boxes. Ground Branch operators get all the right tools for the job straight away — courtesy of the Agency.
Whether in 8-player co-op or 8v8 adversarial game modes, GROUND BRANCH’s unforgiving gameplay makes careful and calculated teamwork essential. Gather your teammates and practice in full-featured training areas, including shooting ranges with dynamic targets and a killhouse with multiple floor plans. Integrated VOIP with both 3D positional voice and team radio ensures full communication capabilities with no need for third-party software. Text chat and pre-recorded voice messages (commo rose-style) are also available for the mic-less and the shy.
Prefer single-player? Missions with friendly A.I. and a full command system are planned for the future.
In the tactical shooter realm, movement and weapon handling are king. Take full control of your character with standing, crouching and prone stances, each with multiple movement speeds. Unique weapon postures (including low- and high-ready), leaning, free-look (head movement independent from aim), and optional and customizable free-aim (dead zone) put every part of your movement in your hands. Add dedicated mouse sensitivity sliders for point-shooting, unmagnified, and magnified aiming, and highly configurable key binding options.
You can also alternate between default actions of certain controls, such as whether a bolt action operates itself after firing or requires another click to operate.
☑️ = FULLY or PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED
⏳ = PLANNED/UPCOMING
⏳ GROUND BRANCH's unique "campaign" format will deliver smaller, more localized sets of missions based around global hotspots, with a centralized intelligence interface to monitor them and receive new mission orders over time. The choices you make along the way may affect future engagements.
☑️ Based on unique environments all over the world, the non-linear mission and map designs offer multiple entry points and open-ended outcomes.
☑️ Enemies are spawned at mission start, with a degree of randomization to quantity and location. No "monster closets" or magic enemy spawns based on player location or mission progress.
☑️ Ready Room: A physical multiplayer lobby where you can plan your approach, see your teammates' loadouts, test weapon configurations on a firing range and jointly select insertion points.
☑️ Full and 100% free dedicated server support. Host a server wherever you want!
☑️ Unit patches that can be attached to your character's sleeves and gear.
⏳ Full support for MP ladders.
☑️ After-action review (AAR) following each mission/round.
☑️ Server-side options.
⏳ Full mod support.
☑️ No item unlocking, hit markers, kill confirmations or score pop-ups.
⏳ Weapon bracing/supporting.
☑️ Varied arsenal: Multiple handguns, submachine guns, carbines, assault and battle rifles, machine guns, DMRs, sniper rifles and explosives to choose from, with a full suite of optics and attachments to complement them.
☑️ Map variation: In addition to day and night versions as well as weather variation, maps have small details that can change between rounds, such as doors and windows that may be open, closed or blocked.
☑️ Unlimited loadout save slots.
☑️ Item sharing/dropping/pickups.
☑️ Accurate ballistics with penetration, bullet drop and stopping power simulation.
⏳ No regenerating health or health packs: Administer first aid to non-lethal injuries that would further reduce combat effectiveness if not treated.
⏳ Location damage model: Expect visible injuries and consequences, such as limping, reduced arm function, and/or hits to stamina and accuracy. Players immobilized from a non-lethal injury can stay in the fight.
⏳ Drag teammates to safety to administer first aid – or to safely recover their ammo, gear, or cargo.
☑️ Appropriate and realistic playable female characters.
☑️ Partial controller support (configurable).
GROUND BRANCH V1.0 launches with the campaign Prologue and the base multiplayer experience. Each following release expands the campaign with a new chapter and various upgrades, eventually wrapping up the current roadmap with a major multiplayer update bringing new gear, map updates, an improved health system and new game modes.
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Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English**languages with full audio support
Updates
Build ids and update times come straight from Steam's PICS — the same source SteamDB reads. Patch history grows as we record new builds.
Engagement
Hours played at review time, across 730 reviews with recorded playtime.
Reviews
Themes across 729 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Reviews
With a heavy heart, and despite how much love I have for this game, I have to say that this is one of the blandest, most disappointing exits from Early Access I have ever seen in the mil-sim category. I have followed GROUND BRANCH since it was first announced here on Steam. It was one of the games that originally got me interested in airsoft all those years ago, so I genuinely wanted to see it succeed. After nearly eight years in Early Access, however, I expected the 1.0 release to finally feel like the complete realization of what the developers had been building toward. Instead, it feels like another ordinary beta update with a new main menu and Operations room attached to it. So much was said about the Operations story mode, yet 1.0 launched with only two missions. Even basic objective progression appears broken or unfinished. You can complete a mission repeatedly, but the Operations screen may still remain blank instead of showing that you completed it. I do not mind the reuse of existing maps. The maps themselves were never my main problem. The real issue is that the enemy AI still destroys any sense of tactical gameplay. Fire at one enemy and the rest often come flocking toward your position, allowing you to stand in a corridor and kill them one after another without moving an inch. That is not believable tactical AI. It is the same predictable funneling behavior the game has struggled with for years. The release notes may contain a long list of changes, but during actual gameplay, 1.0 does not feel meaningfully different from the game I played six or seven years ago. The presentation has changed, some systems have been added, and several maps have been updated, but the core experience still feels unfinished. That is what makes this release so disappointing. I had hope. I followed the development for years. I did not expect a revolutionary transformation, but I at least expected 1.0 to feel new, complete and worthy of finally leaving Early Access. Instead, it feels like the beta simply had its label removed. TL;DR: maybe wait another 3 years, then maybe this game will be worth it, at 5 usd maybe, if it's still active
Game was great before V1 update now unplayable you get through about 3 mins of an operation and crash im on a 9070xt GPU with 7800X3D CPU 32gbDDR5 ram its crazy ruined their whole game with this engine change
this game was bad when i bought it and its still bad now. save your money and go buy bellum that game is way better in every single way.
This game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks bro
I don't understand all the hate. I've been with the game as early as when it first came to steam. This last update has truly been amazing. Its had a lot of work put into it with thought out placement. Just because the bipod still doesn't work doesn't mean you should give it a negative review. They have touched every aspect of this game over the years, and it takes a lot of work and time to make a game that feels this fluid. NO, its not perfect. But its fun, its got a hell of a lot more customization than ready or not. Speaking of which, why are we comparing this to ready or not? Just because its a shooter? Just because the gunplay and level design is similar? This game is about special forces, ready or not is about swat. They're close in identity, but are fundamentally not the same game or have the same mechanics. I love ready or not, I have about 300 hours on it. But this has been scratching the itch more for me. I like that not everything is the exact same every time i play it. I like don't have to update my 500 ready or not mods just to play it for an hour with a buddy.
been on for a hour and crashed 5 times im good
I've been playing this game on and off for a while now, and I used to be able to recommend it because, you know, it was in early access, so there was this hope that all the major bugs and problems would be ironed out. Now that it's a "1.0" release, I unfortunately cannot recommend it anymore. The 100Gb size is one thing, but the so-called Operations mode has just 2 missions with "More to come". THERE SHOULDNT BE MORE TO COME! THIS IS A 1.0 RELEASE!! Not to mention the fact that even with the AI rework they still 1-shot you across the entire pitch black map, don't react to sounds like opening doors or the power being turned off, and are still generally just dumb as rocks. The "reworked" animations and movement system is still janky and I personally have not noticed any changes whatsoever except for maybe some sounds. For a full release, this is absolutely unacceptable and I don't doubt that this is where the Ground Branch story ends. I do understand that often developers are under strict time constraints and this is an issue with the higher-ups at MicroProse, but still, like c'mon. I really hope to return to this project one day and see it be completed.
my trash 3050 laptop could run this game perfectly fine before 1.0, now its so laggy, even on the lowest graphics i get like 40fps which is horrible, i used to get 100+ fps
The ai is impossible to deal with random shooting spotting me from 100 ft through a wall being turned around is crazy they randomly throw grenades at me over walls when they are not agro i don't think you should get this mind numb hyed up trash.
Years of early access and the 1.0 release is identical to the first version.
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Trends
Modeled estimate over time, reconstructed from Steam's monthly review histogram.
Engagement
DAU/MAU are modeled from peak concurrent players (≈×8 and ×28) — Steam publishes no active-user counts, so treat these as rough estimates, not reported figures.
Audience
Audience
Games most often reviewed by the same players — an audience-affinity signal from our review sample, not full ownership data.
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.
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